Family claims fear of bullying led to teen road tragedy death

The problem of bullying in schools has been highlighted by the family of a teenager who was killed in a road crash.

A 13-year-old boy died after crashing a car into a power pole in Warrnambool in Western Victoria early on Monday morning.

"At this stage we believe a 13-year-old boy got into his family's vehicle at about 4:30am this morning and was driving at fairly significant speed on Raglan Parade," said Sergeant Dave Evans.

A member of the boy's family has claimed in news reports that the teenager had been bullied while briefly attending Mount Gambier High School earlier this year.

Reports say the teenager's uncle believes the boy took his grandparents' car and tried to leave Warrnambool to escape starting a new school later that morning.

Mount Gambier High School principal Peter McKay confirmed to ABC Radio that they had dealt with a bullying complaint.

"There had been once incident and the school worked within its policies to follow that incident through but were unable to bring it to a resolution because the parents decided to leave and our information is that the parents were going to be moving to Victoria anyway and decided to move earlier than they had planned to," says Mr McKay.

The boy attended Mount Gambier for three weeks earlier this year, but his parents signed him out in February.

He says counselling services had been made available for students and teachers who knew the 13 year old boy following Monday's incident.

"The school would like to extend our deepest sympathy to the parents," Peter McKay said.

"We can only do the best that we can do and we work very hard to make sure that we are taking care of all these cases of bullying, but despite the best efforts of parents, teachers and students to encourage each other to live lives based on respect, care and compassion and honesty, we're still confronted with this issue from time to time."

Mr McKay says the school has programs to educate students about bullying and he says strong consequences exist for perpetrators and support for victims.

"It's been a strong focus for schools over recent years with the increase in not just the one-on-one bullying that we see in the school yard but also cyber bullying," Peter McKay says.

"There's now the offer of a parent forum in Adelaide for people to attend to discuss the issues around cyber bullying and there's been money that has been put into this project to allow schools to invest in programs to remove bullying from our schools."

South Australian Education Minister Dr Jane Lomax-Smith describes bullying as "a scourge" and she says work is on-going to stamp out bullying in schools, particularly cyber bullying.

"Also this highlights the terrible issues to do with road deaths and of course, my heartfelt condolences go out to the family because it's a real tragedy to lose a child, it's every parent's worst dream," she said.

"I think that we need to all understand that bullying is something we all need to work on, if it were easy it would have been eradicated years ago."